Gina at The Point: Youth Reads asked me to review the new Sarah Dessen book, What Happened to Good-bye. I agreed for a couple of reasons: my teen and young adult daughters all read Ms. Dessen’s books, and one of them happened to have a copy of the latest. However, said daughter took the book with her to Slovakia for the month of July, and I was without a review copy.

So I decided to read some of Ms. Dessen’s earlier books for the sake of comparison and research. I read This Lullaby and Lock and Key (because those were the ones that were available at the library), and lo! and behold, they turned out to be the same book. Well, they’re not exactly the same, but quite similar in tone and plot. I liked the narrator in Lock and Key better.

Plot: Girl with family problems, messed-up mother, absent father, guards her heart with a hard exterior and a bad attitude. Girl meets boy who breaks through the hard exterior to prove that love is worth the risk.

Theme: It’s a hard world and parents aren’t very trustworthy, but loving someone is worth the risk of having your heart broken.

Tone: Bitter and somewhat romantic. Both at the same time?

So we’re talking chick-lit for young adults, mostly for girls. Ruby, the narrator in Lock and Key, is closed, guarded, ungrateful, and a bit hostile, but it’s possible to see underneath her unfriendliness, a heart and a childlike vulnerability. Remy, the narrator in This Lullaby, is closed, guarded, promiscuous, anal-retentive, and quite hostile. Her surrender to the charms of Dexter, the lead singer in a boy band, doesn’t ring quite true, not as believable as Ruby and Nate in the first book anyway.

Artiste Daughter tells me that these two aren’t the best of Ms. Dessen’s books, so I’m reserving judgement. However, so far I’m not impressed. They’re O.K., but nothing I would recommend or push on anyone. There’s a sprinkling of crude language in both books, not too much, but annoying nonetheless. Most readers probably won’t notice. There’s also an assumption, especially in This Lullaby, that teen, unmarried sex is a given in any dating relationship. It’s only a question of how long after the first date the relationship will be consummated. Although both the language and the promiscuity are probably true-to-life in some circles, I didn’t like it. It always makes me sad to read about girls in particular selling themselves so short.

I did read Along for the Ride, also by Sarah Dessen, a year or two ago, and although I don’t remember many details, I do think I liked it better than I did these two. It’s another girl-meets-boy teen romance, but without the sex, language, and bitterness issues, as I remember.

On August 29 and after, this post will be a part of the new Carnival of Young Adult Literature.